A couple weeks ago, we wrote about Seagate’s upcoming technology to increase the storage capacity of hard drives over the next 10 to 15 years. Flash will not be able to catch up with hard drives, according to Seagate, but it isn’t standing still either. Micron and Intel are now sampling a technology that could bring 512 MB SSDs into the mass market and 1 TB SSD for those who are looking for maximum capacity in SSDs. As Intel is supplying flash memory to Apple, we could be seeing a capacity bump for Apple products by January.

Micron and Intel are using a triple-layer-cell (TLC) technology that can store three bits instead of two in multi-level-cell (MLC) and only one in single-layer-cell (SLC) NAND flash devices such as flash storage cards, USB memory sticks and SSDs. While TLC devices are already in use in USB memory sticks and MP3 players, Micron and Intel are first to be sampling the devices in 25 nm, down from 34 nm. One 300 mm production wafer can now hold close to 500 8 Gb NAND flash chips for a total capacity of almost 4 TB.

The companies are packaging the chips in stacks of up to 8 single chips, which results in 8×8 packages with a capacity of 64 GB. While there is no information on mass production devices yet, we would assume that Micron and Intel would continue to offer a variation of this package in shape as well as a 4x8GB devices. According to Micron, the chips are sampling at this time and will go into production by the end of this year. Conceivably, the new chips could make it not only into new storage cards such as 64 GB SD versions, but into consumer electronics such as the iPod touch, iPhone and iPad as well. Given the layout of the iPhone 4, Apple should be able to bump the iPhone 4’s capacity to 64 GB, the iPad to 128 GB and the iPod touch possibly to 128 GB as well.

Further down the road, TLC could make it into SSDs to result in more affordable 512 GB devices for consumers – and later on even 1 TB models. However, the problem with MLC and especially TLC is that their performance and endurance is less capable than that of SLC. While the technology to store more data in less space is definitely there, the industry is working on ways to make TLC more reliable and increase the read/write cycles to drive the flash deeper into the mass storage consumer market.

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